Another Take On Paranormal Activity 2

In the history of Hollywood sequels to independent films, I'm not
sure there are many masterpieces. But whatever you thought of the
original Paranormal Activity, you must admit that the fact that
its sequel is just as good is a rare treat. If the eternal mantra of
the Hollywood sequel is "bigger is better," then Paranormal Activity 2
didn't have to go far to enlarge on the spare and sparse original; in
essence, all the filmmakers have done is double the number of
inhabitants in the haunted house. But along the way, they also flesh out
questions you might have had from the first film and they accomplished
this without taking anything away from what made that
first film experience scary.

Paranormal Activity 2 begins a few months before the events
of the first film, in a house that looks a lot like the one where the
protagonists of that film, Micah and Katie, were terrorized. Perhaps
that's not so strange, this is suburban Southern California after all. A
family of four moves into the house: Katie's sister Kris, her husband
Daniel, teen stepdaughter Ali, new-ish baby boy Hunter plus their German
Shepherd, Abby. And, soon, they too are terrorized by increasingly
sinister noises, moving objects and all manner of spooky things you
should be familiar with.

Thanks to what appears to be a nasty break-in early in the film, the
family splurges on six high-definition security cameras around the
house, which increases their sense of ease, but is most beneficial for
increasing the number of places that scares can happen. Other than the
increase in coverage, reports of a budget nearly ten times that of the
first film is staggering when you realize that Paranormal Activity 2
looks about the same. There is perhaps a bit more CGI this time around,
but the series remains a very workhorse-like production, where
simplicity is favored above all else.

Though the sequel essentially retreads the first film, Paranormal Activity 2
is better in a lot of ways. The new family is endearing in the short
amount of time we are allowed to play voyeur in their lives before the
haunting truly begins, and the fact that we get less time with the
characters moves the film forward at a better pace and leaves less
chance of their "faux verite" interactions to become grating. There are
more scares this time around, and surely they will be best experienced
in a theater, but the scares are also more complex and often rely on our
knowledge of the first film. You can see this entry independently, but
the films work better in tandem.

There was a pretty harsh divide last year between audiences who enjoyed the naturalistic feel of Paranormal Activity's ghost
story and those who focused on the lack of big scare scenes. Here
again, there are going to be those who claim the sequel is boring and
nothing happens, but they can't fool me: I was there and everyone in the
audience was fixed to the screen. I've never seen a crowd of teenagers
sit so still during protracted silences and long scenes without pay-off.

I don't mean to overemphasize the atmospheric nature of the film; the
scary moments are not particularly psychological in nature, and we are
still talking loud noises and jump scares, but the atmosphere is slower
and less reliant on mile-a-minute jump cuts, flashes of light and rock
music. You know something bad is going to happen, and Paranormal Activity 2
teaches you to wait for it. That your average movie-going audience
would be okay with "waiting for it" is an anomaly in the age of
overstimulation, and if its success inspires more big-budget horror
producers to explore a more deliberate pace, then the Paranormal Activity series might turn out to be the best thing to happen to the horror industry in years.